


As the Sun Burns the Ground

by risrisris



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Pre-Stanford, Stanford Era, do not copy to another site
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:50:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21887185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/risrisris/pseuds/risrisris
Summary: This is a work of fan fiction. I do not own these characters and make no profit from this work.Title from lyrics to “Kashmir” by Led Zeppelin.Sam tells Dean about his plans to go to college.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	As the Sun Burns the Ground

The first two weeks after he tells Dean are spent in awkward silence, nothing but tense air bridging the space between them across the black leather seat of the car. The words they exchange are the basics, the lifesavers: how is ammo, do the tires look low, is it time for a meal or for rest. Their distance feels charged, as if Sam leaning closer will push Dean away, matching ends of a magnet. Eating in diners is a pain, especially when they can’t get window seats. Dean sits reading the menu card, one stained side and then the other, as he calmly downs 6:00 a.m. bacon and runny eggs. He doesn’t seem to gag over his food like Sam does. Sam feels like he has an elephant on his chest, and Dean won’t even look at him.

It isn’t a life-changing revelation or a bleeding-out injury from a hunt that ends the freeze. One day, Dean asks for the salt at breakfast instead of reaching across Sam’s plate. When they leave the diner, he offers Sam a toothpick. Two towns later, he asks if he wants to drive.

Sam says no, thanks, knowing Dean can hear the lump in his throat.

He doesn’t kid himself that Dean isn’t still pissed. At the end of August Sam will belong to a new life, one without hunters and monsters. One without his brother.

“We never did anything for your birthday,” Dean drops out of nowhere on a white-hot stretch of road in eastern Utah. Baby kicks as the grade steepens, and Dean curses. “We’re stopping in the next town so I can check the engine, and then we’re making you a new ID.” Dean turns and flashes Sam that thousand-watt smile, waggles his eyebrows.

They pull onto the Vegas strip a half a day later, Baby sporting a new fan belt and baby brother sporting a new ID card declaring him 23 years old. Sam has drunk alcohol before, but this is his first night plastered, really and truly wasted. After a concerned hour spent in the bathroom followed by wrestling him fully clothed into bed, Dean smiles down at Sam, chuckles. Stupid, Sam knows. No need to rub it in. The smile is the last thing he sees as Dean leans down to brush Sam’s damp hair away from his forehead.

The second night is somewhat more successful, in that Sam maintains gastrointestinal fortitude for the duration of the evening. Dean snags two pretty girls in gaudy makeup, a brunette and a redhead—“Dancers, Sammy!”—and the four stagger down the strip to progressively seedier dives, to entertain each other for a few hours. The redhead takes a liking to Sam—“You’re cute, sweetheart”—but no one ever got boned after a “sweetheart,” and anyhow Sam is all at sea, and now he’s lost Dean on a dance floor and starts to hyperventilate and the redhead’s lips are close to his ear, “Quiet, baby, it’s okay,” until Dean shows up and puts a big hand on his chest and drags him into the men’s room to splash cool water over his face and neck. They cut out the back into the alley where the sweat on Sam’s skin turns to steam.

“You gotta cool it, man,” Dean says.

“I don’t know how,” Sam says back, dazed. “It’s hot as hell.” They find a 7-Eleven and Dean buys Sam a giant bottle of water that he inhales on the slow walk back up the strip. “Sorry I ruined your night,” Sam says, finally.

“You didn’t ruin anything, bitch.” Dean hip-checks him, splashing a little water down his front. “Here, give me a swig of that.” They share the bottle the rest of the way back to the motel, Sam using his new height to play a game of keep-away when Dean hogs it for too many sips.

“I just wish you were here, is all,” Dean says, and Sam doesn’t need to hear a _sir_ to know that Dad is on the other end of the line. Sam knows the moment Dean hears him enter the room—his back straightens and he turns, his eyes guarded, his face wearing the mask that lets Sam know he’s being left out of some loop. “Yes, sir. We’ll be there day after tomorrow.” He hangs up the phone and brushes past Sam on his way to the bathroom.

“Where is he?” Sam asks, tone as neutral as he can manage.

“Outside Gainesville. Told him we’d be there—“

“Day after tomorrow. I heard.” Sam flexes his jaw. They never can seem to stay off the job for long.

Dean pops his head out of the bathroom, where he has evidently been applying something shiny to his hair. “Pull the stick out of your ass, buddy. We’re still going out tonight.”

They empty the loose change out of Baby’s ashtray and glovebox and grab brunch at an aging casino off the main drag, then spend a couple of hours haunting the one-armed bandits. Sam wins $10, which they reinvest in side-by-side slot machines until all the coins are gone.

The hottest hours of the day are spent back at the motel. Stripped down to a pair of Dean’s old basketball shorts, Sam is self-conscious and wastes no time slipping into the shallow end of the tiny kidney-shaped pool. Dean somehow manages not to kill either of them when he does a cannonball into the “deep” end. The sun is angled so that the motel buildings cast shadows, and Sam rests against the edge of the pool and leans his head and shoulders back into the shade.

“Aw, come on, princess, you’re not even gonna get your hair wet?” Dean frog-paddles to where Sam half leans, half floats, tugging him by the ankle toward the center of the pool. Sam closes his eyes and leans further back into the shade, smiling to himself. He doesn’t notice until too late Dean’s stealth approach from underneath, scooping him up in bridal fashion and dumping him spluttering into the center of the pool.

They take turns dunking and dodging each other. When Dean grabs Sam from behind, wet skin on skin, crowing as he gets the upper hand, it raises goose flesh all over Sam’s body.

After a nap and a shower, the boys put on their only dress clothes and lace-up shoes.

“It’s like high school picture day!” Dean snickers as he ties Sam’s tie.

“You know I can do this myself, right?”

“Yeah, but I do it better. Like so many things.” Dean winks, sticks out his tongue. “There, you’re all done.”

As the sun sets over the bowl of hills around this weird oasis, the boys walk up the strip shoulder to shoulder. Three bars in, Dean finds them a mostly-friendly game of pool, and together they snag an easy hundred for the ride south. Sam wins them an extra round on a game of darts. The night is in full swing. Things don’t get dicey until Paul from Encino, who is terrible at pool and worse at reading the room, makes a grab for the front of Sam’s pants. Before Sam can even respond Dean has the dirtbag on the wall.

Sam insists on leaving quickly, before the bloodshed. Dean insists on carrying out a handle of whiskey and a six-pack and practically drags Sam back to the motel. They trade stories and take shots from paper cups. Sam doesn’t mind this, really. The night may actually have gotten better.

Dean at 12:00 a.m. is not Dean at 8:00 p.m. His eyes are wet and wired, his lips chapped, his skin rosy. He’s draped his button-down and slacks over one chair, himself over another. Sam has stripped down to his boxers and taken up residence on the bed nearest the door, in the path of the swamp cooler. Listing slightly, he watches Dean pour them both another shot, then rise with effort and walk over to the bed to hand Sam his drink. Dean nearly falls into place beside him, holds the cup out of Sam’s reach. Sam leans closer, the cup moves further, and so on, until their faces are _this close_.

“Don’t leave me,” Dean whispers, a secret, eyes wide. His lips are full, his breath pure whiskey. Sam wants to taste them both. He reaches for the cup and downs the shot.

“I’m not leaving you,” Sam says to his empty cup, and the moment is gone, and Dean with it, back to his chair.

They kill the thing in Gainesville, and Dean has yet another near miss, and Sam comes away bleeding and furious because how in the _hell_ can the old man keep putting Dean, putting them, out there in harm’s way like this, it’s enough that he’s hurtling down the road toward his own early death, but his own sons, one just barely out of high school, the other never had a chance at anything but this shit life—

Sam registers the crack of his jaw, the slam of his shoulder as he hits the wall.

“I’m leaving,” he says after a breath, and there are tears behind it. _Not yet, not _yet_, crybaby._

“And just where the hell do you think you’re gonna go? _Stanford?_” And the old man is up in his face, crowding his space, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt, dragging him up against the wall. “You don’t get to leave this family—”

People talk about how anger makes you see red, Sam thinks as his vision goes momentarily white. _Breathe. _He wraps his hands around his father’s. “Are you going to beat me into submission, is that it?” He looks, cold, into his father’s stricken eyes, and John lets go.

“Sammy,” John begins, but he doesn’t finish.

And where is Dean in all of this? He leans in the bedroom doorway, hands in his pockets, looking all of twelve years old and doing—nothing.

Sam moves toward the bedroom to grab his duffel, still packed from the long drive. Dean steps aside and says nothing. The hot tears behind Sam’s eyes make their way down his cheeks. He keeps his eyes down as he makes his way to the screen door.

John’s voice catches him. “You walk out that door—don’t you ever come back.”

Sam closes his eyes and grasps the door handle. He doesn’t turn around as he leaves.


End file.
